Thomas Hardy Quotes

Thomas Hardy was a born and bred Dorset man of the country who was an architect before he decided to unleash his literary genius as a full time writer. He always regarded himself as a poet first and foremost and he wrote poetry throughout his life. However it was his novels he became famous for with classics such as Far From The Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles raking in the sales. He set many of his novels in the south west region of England where he gave life to the name of the old Anglo Saxon kingdom of Wessex which has fuelled a mini literary tourism industry with people visiting the places used in his books. The realism in his writing made bleak reading but his characters gripped you where you could feel the pain of their trials and tribulations. He married twice although he never quite got over the death of his first wife Emma Gifford who was the love of his life. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on twelve occasions but although he never managed to win the award he was always held in great esteem by his peers and members of the Royal Society of Literature. He died in January 1928 and although his ashes were interred in Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey his heart was buried in his native Stinsford, Dorset in the same grave as his first wife. Great writers often make great quotes and it always makes interesting research for these pages, so here is my list of the 12 best Thomas Hardy quotes.

Mini Bio

Name: Thomas Hardy

Born: 2nd June 1840, Stinsford, Dorset, England

Died: 11th January 1928, Dorchester, Dorset, England

Occupation: Novelist and poet

Alma mater: King's College London

Best known for: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)

Influenced: D. H. Lawrence, John Cowper Powys and W. Somerset Maugham

Trivia: He took an apprenticeship and was trained as an architect which was his job for many years before deciding to become a writer

"Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change"

Thomas Hardy

"A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms"

Thomas Hardy

"To discover evil in a new friend is to most people only an additional experience"

Thomas Hardy

"Good, but not religious-good"

Thomas Hardy

"Work hard and be poor, do nothing and get more"

Thomas Hardy

"You calculated how to be un-calculating, and are natural by art"

Thomas Hardy

"To find beauty in ugliness is the province of the poet"

Thomas Hardy

"Teach me to live, that I may dread the grave as little as my bed"

Thomas Hardy

"To every bad there is a worse"

Thomas Hardy

"Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons"

Thomas Hardy

"Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness"

Thomas Hardy

"The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him"

Thomas Hardy

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